EU Treaty: after a feat close to genius, David Cameron’s status is now as high as it has ever been

David Cameron speaks to the media at the EU summit in BrusselsPhoto: AFP/GETTY

By Peter Oborne

8:14PM GMT 09 Dec 2011

Let's try try a mental experiment. Let’s imagine what would have happened if David Cameron had taken the advice of Tory backbenchers and embarked on a policy of outright confrontation with Brussels.

On one level the outcome would have been exactly the same. The same almighty row would have erupted, and Britain would still have been reduced to a minority of one.

But on the deeper level the outcome would have been completely different. Impartial observers would have concluded that Cameron had acted unreasonably, that Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel were the injured parties, and that Britain was – yet again – in the wrong.

Crucially, it was clear last night to all but our most one-eyed and dedicated enemies — and to the BBC, whose biased reporting has once again been a disgrace — that the British prime minister had behaved with propriety. And that is because he set out to Brussels 48 hours ago bent on conciliation not confrontation.

Nobody could have behaved more reasonably. He was all charm with his fellow European leaders, while flatly rejecting ill-tempered demands from the Tory back benches that he should seize the opportunity created by the euro crisis to demand a massive repatriation of powers to Britain.

As a result he paid a heavy price for a while among his own MPs, one of whom labelled him a gutless appeaser in the tradition of Neville Chamberlain.

Today that Tory MP, Edward Leigh – as historically illiterate as he is disloyal – owes the Prime Minister a substantial apology. For Cameron’s courteous and level-headed method of doing business has triumphed.

And consider this: had Cameron taken Leigh’s advice the Coalition would this morning be in tatters because the Prime Minister would be personally blamed for precipitating what some commentators are calling one of the most deadly splits in the history of the European Union.

In those circumstances this morning’s papers would be full of reports of Cabinet resignations and a rift in the Coalition, amid predictions that the Government was about to fall.

Instead Cameron has achieved an outcome that I would previously have judged wholly impossible. He has led Britain into a position where it is outnumbered 26-1 in Europe, and yet retained the support of the fanatically pro-Brussels Liberal Democrats.

On Friday night it was not just Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, and Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who were rallying round the Government. So were backbenchers such as Sir Menzies Campbell, the powerful Lib Dem grandee, although some colleagues accused their leader of betrayal. So an extraordinary new alliance had been created: Cameron’s policy of principled, reasonable isolation is backed by the mutinous Tory Right, the pro-European Conservative Left and the Europhile Lib Dems.

It takes something close to genius to bring together such a warring group of diehard ideological opponents. Yet against all the odds and in defiance of conventional wisdom Cameron has achieved it.

How did he pull off this amazing feat? I do not believe that the Prime Minister cunningly plotted the outcome. I can discern no Mandelsonian dark arts, and no cunning strategy. Cameron did not travel to Brussels thinking how he could outmanoeuvre the Tory right, while keeping the Lib Dems sweet.

He won out because he played it straight. He wanted to do the right thing by Europe and by Britain. The evidence suggests that he was motivated by nothing more sophisticated than a determination to conduct himself with integrity and to act in the national interest.

He was honest with Clegg, promising that he would not blackmail European leaders by demanding a repatriation of powers, but in return gaining his deputy’s support for a full-blooded defence of the City of London.

And from the start Cameron was determined to do absolutely nothing to jeopardise the plan to save the single currency being put together by the 17 eurozone countries. Even so he went into the Brussels talks full of gloom. “He thought all the outcomes were bad,” one of his aides told me.

Then early yesterday morning it suddenly became blindingly obvious that Sarkozy and Merkel were using Britain as the alibi for the failure of their beloved single currency.

Rather than come to terms with their own poor judgment, incompetence and failure, they would rather blame Britain and take it out on the City of London.

So Cameron faces a long and desperately hard battle in the months ahead as he fights for British interests in a darkening economic climate. But thanks to his honourable conduct over the last two days, he engages in that struggle from the moral high ground.

Better still, he does so from a position of political strength that seemed inconceivable as he came under bitter attack from his own back benches while enduring the brutal mockery of Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, earlier this week.

Today it is the Labour Party that appears to be siding with Sarkozy’s dishonest and spiteful attempt to isolate Britain, which is on the wrong side of the argument.

Only two days ago Cameron was being written off across much of the media and by many of his own supporters. He was portrayed as weak, unprincipled and treacherous.

Last night his stature was as high as at any moment in his premiership. The Prime Minister has shown yet again that he is a most formidable politician, especially when he looks trapped with the odds cast against him.